We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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The decision to write off billions of dollars in debt for various Third World nations is in effect a subsidy for bad governance. Oh sure, the debt relief is tied to various conditions aimed at improving the kleptocratic ways that are the norm in the world’s various hellholes, but it is still just a way of saying that in the final analysis it is western taxpayers yet again who will be the ones picking up bill for the actions of various corrupt WaBenz bureaucrats.
And what of those poor nations who actually do repay their loans? What of those who keep corruption under control and who have a ruling class that does not see private businesses as a personal piggy bank to be raided as needed? What message is sent to them when they see the incompetent and corrupt rewarded with free money so that some celebrity activists can make economic illiterates feel good about themselves?
Which brings me to Geldof. I just cannot figure out this guy; on one hand he says self-evident sensible things like (emphasis added):
Bob Geldof admitted today no amount of aid to Africa could eradicate poverty on the continent while its Governments remain corrupt. The former singer was launching a 170-page compact summary of the Africa Commission’s report which will be presented to the G8 summit this July.
And the maverick Irishman repeated his call for ‘hundreds of thousands’ to converge on Edinburgh to coincide with the summit at Gleneagles. He said: “The issue governance is at the forefront of this compact. You can’t give aid to countries when they return it to us in debt payment, especially if you don’t allow them to trade with us. None of that will function unless there is a decent Government.”
But then says something as preposterous as:
Fears over corrupt African regimes should not be used to delay aid to the poverty-stricken continent, Bob Geldof said yesterday. Less than 48 hours after both Tony Blair and George W Bush insisted that corrupt regimes had to be tackled to ensure that aid was not wasted, the Live 8 organiser told them to “get off the corruption thing” and deliver the promised help.
So what is one to make of that? By his own admission, Africa’s appalling governance is a huge contributing factor to poverty and woe (not to mention the continent’s horrific record regarding civil liberties) yet we are urged to “get off the corruption thing”. So to use Geldof’s sort of language… what the fuck?
If governance is perhaps the single biggest factor (amongst several) that makes the Third World so damn poor, surely the Western taxpayers whose money Geldof is to keen to give away should indeed be asking if they really want their money to end up in someone else’s Swiss bank accounts via Kinshasa or Freetown.
Sadly for Africa, most of the things written about the causes and solutions of poverty in the Third World, or at least the articles that get serious column inches, are drivel by ‘celebrity activists’ who are ill-informed and arrogant in equal measure. A prime example being the mind numbingly ignorant Chris Martin for example, who thinks ‘shareholders’, the people who provide the capital to wealth creating businesses, which are the “great evil of this modern world” rather than, say, the governments of North Korea, Cuba and Burma. But then such folks do not concern themselves with actual benefits to poor people in various far off places but rather with pithy soundbites and causing emotional surges brought on by ‘doing something’, regardless of whether or not it actually improves anything for anyone other that a few Mercedes Benz dealers in sub-Saharan Africa and some portfolio managers in Zürich.
No, none of this really has anything to do with helping common people in the Third World.
A general strike now… will it evolve into more forcefukl resistance to Mugabe’s thugs? I certainly hope so but do not underestimate the violence that Mugabe and his cotery will use to hang on to power (and their lives).
Many of the commentariat in my previous post on the ongoing horror that is Zimbabwe indicated that the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) were a poor choice for me to suggest sending arms to in order to oppose the ZANU-PF tyranny. The MDC are purely a movement dedicated to bring about change democratically via the ballot box, right?
Then please explain this rather inspiring outburst:
The people of Zimbabwe have a right to defend to themselves and to rise up against the oppressive Mugabe regime, Tendai Biti, the MDC member of parliament, has said. Speaking in a radio interview with SWRadioAfrica’s Violet Gonda, he said leadership would emerge to direct popular uprisings.
“I can’t tell you by who, but I can assure you that there will be decisive action against fascism and I can tell you that the next few days are going to be interesting,” said Biti.
Pressed to identify the leadership, Biti replied: “I can’t tell you – and the hundreds of Central Intelligence Organisation officers who I know are listening to me right now – about who is going to provide the leadership, who is going to do what, and so forth – but what I can guarantee you is that the anger is overflowing in the veins of the average Zimbabweans. They will defend themselves. The time for smiling at fascism is over.”
Sounds to me if someone would just provide them with enough guns and a few truck loads of ammunition, these boys are well and truly good to go. Well Godspeed, gentlemen, may you all soon be celebrating together in Harare whilst Mugabe hangs from a nearby lamppost.
Robert Mugabe continues his insane demolition of houses and businesses as he increasingly starts to look like Pol Pot reborn, seeking to depopulate the cites and drive the now homeless and unemployed population into the countryside to eke out an even more miserable living, thereby dispersing and isolating people from communities which might oppose his tyrannical rule.
And where are the marchers in the west? Where are the protesters calling for justice in Zimbabwe? Where is the outrage from those tireless tribunes of the Third World, the UN? Why can I not hear the snarls of fury from the alphabet soup of NGOs? What of the legions of Guardian readers finding out about all this? What are they going to call for? Amnesty International is getting a lot of (bad) publicity from having called Guantanamo Bay ‘a gulag’ whilst now admitting they do not actually know what is happening there, yet why are they not straining every fibre of their being in opposition to this African horror? There is tyranny aplenty to be opposed without having to invent any.
Clearly the only chance for the people of Zimbabwe is for someone, anyone, to help them to rise up and meet violence with violence. They do not need aid, they need guns and ammunition so that supporters of the MDC can start shooting at anyone associated with ZANU-PF or the ‘security’ services. Time for Mugabe’s swaggering police thugs to be met with a hail of gunfire rather than terrified sobbing. But of course the South African ANC government, far from being a possible solution to the rapidly deteriorating situation across the border, is aiding and abetting in the Cambodia-ization of Zimbabwe. I look forward to Saint Nelson Mandela taking a loud, public and sustained stand against Mugabe’s madness. Yeah, right.
If Tony Blair was serious about doing something about poverty in Africa, he would be sending guns to the MDC and to anyone else who is willing to resist and threatening to have some gentlemen from Hereford put a .338 hole between Mugabe’s eyes unless things change radically. What a pity Zimbabwe does not have oil or maybe more people would give a damn what is happening there.
The Globalization Institute’s crack of dawn email of links continues to arrive, every week day, and continues to be well worth getting.
One of the recent links thus promulgated was to this editorial, from Kenya.
First few paragraphs:
With all the money they get as emoluments, one would have expected that our Members of Parliament would strive to ensure that they do an honest day’s job all year round.
But a report on their performance released yesterday shockingly says that the legislators only did 57 full working days the whole of last year. Allowing for public holidays, weekends and the days Parliament was in recess, this translates to less than two months of work.
Yet, these are people who are enjoying a salary package of Sh500,000 and other perks. They are the people who have been entrusted with articulating the needs of their people in Parliament.
Despite this, the study conducted by the Institute for Civic Affairs and Development says, there are some MPs who never brought any Bills to the House, never contributed to any and never raised a point of order.
In plain terms, this could be called incompetence.
One of the more depressing and destructive assumptions now rampaging about the world and doing damage to it is that the basic job of politicians is to pass laws. The more laws they pass, the better they must be doing.
But would Kenya really be a better governed country if all its members of parliament were to bring Bills to the House, instead of only some? Is it really the ultimate criticism of a politician that he never tries to pass any new laws. If politics means passing more laws, then maybe Kenya is lucky that it is not getting as much politics as it is paying for. There are far worse political vices than laziness.
I get the rough idea. Kenya’s parliamentarians are not the greatest, and I am sure that is true. But this is a very bad way to explain what is so wrong with them.
Surprise surprise:
President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party today emerged victorious in the official results of a Zimbabwean parliamentary election criticised by the opposition and western powers as fraudulent.
With 84 of the contested 120 parliamentary seats declared, Zanu-PF took 51. Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won 33, according to results on the official counting screen at the Harare election centre.
The ruling party entered the race needing only 46 seats to obtain a simple majority in the 150-seat parliament, where 30 members are Mugabe appointees.
Still, at least this election has given everyone something to grab hold of, and it surely counts for something that Mugabe feels that he needs to fake the result he wants.
It is interesting how much more interest the pro-Iraq-war blogosphere is paying to Zimbabwe now. It is all because of the Iraq election. Until that happened, the pro-Iraq-war blogosphere was understandably pre-occcupied with Iraq, and other misery-spots tended to be neglected. But since the election, the pro-Iraq-war blogosphere is interested in any circumstance which seems in any way to be being influenced by that election. Suddenly, all political badness everywhere is part of the story, provided only that some locals are making democratic noises, demonstrating, etc.
I am not complaining. This just goes to show how right they were when they said, those that did, that the election would make a huge difference. It has.
However, this is interesting. It is a piece by S. J. Masty at the Social Affairs Unit blog, trashing the whole idea of spreading democracy hither and thither, in countries to which it is not suited and who have not evolved it at their own speed and in their own way. Instead of having one relatively staid kleptocracy in permanent charge, says Masty, democracy is liable to replace that one kleptocracy with two or three competing kleptocracies. “Predator democracies”, he calls these unfortunate countries. This is well worth a read, and a think. (Thanks to Patrick Crozier for the link.)
What I think is that Masty may be confusing the messenger (democracy) with the message (lots of people are now rowing about who gets to rule the country). An old fashioned monarchy, by definition, would put an end to the rowing, but can an old-fashioned monarchy survive in a country where so many more people want a slice of the action than in the old days?
UPDATE: This is the kind of thing Masty has in mind.
Here are the first two paragraphs of a BBC report about a report, from a Commission:
The UK-led Commission for Africa has urged wealthy nations to double their aid to the continent, raising it by £30bn ($50bn) a year over 10 years.
African leaders need to root out corruption and promote good governance, the commission’s final report says.
I cannot help suspecting that there may be something of a contradiction there, between paragraph one and paragraph two.
Is the way to root out corruption to double the amount of money you are chucking at it? This, it seems to me, might be problematic.
I mean, how do they intend to persuade Africans to refrain from being corrupt? Bribe them?
I have long believed that Robert Mugabe, ruler of the hapless Zimbabwe, will die before he ever admits to having made a mistake. Yet the Telegraph now offers this report, about how Mugabe has admitted to making a mistake!
President Robert Mugabe confessed yesterday that millions of acres of prime land seized from Zimbabwe’s white farmers are now lying empty and idle.
Confessed.
After years spent trumpeting the “success” of the land grab, Mr Mugabe, 81, admitted that most of the farms transferred to black owners have never been used.
Admitted.
But what did Mugabe actually say?
… in his home province yesterday, Mr Mugabe chided the new landowners for growing crops on less than half of their land.
“President Mugabe expressed disappointment with the land use, saying only 44 per cent of the land distributed is being fully utilised,” state television reported. “He warned the farmers that the government will not hesitate to redistribute land that is not being utilised.”
In other words, Mugabe admitted no wrongdoing at all. He made the right decision. It was the people who were charged with implementing the decision who did wrong, by failing to grow as much food as they should have.
Plenty of other people are saying that Mugabe made a mistake with this larcenous policy:
Critics said Mr Mugabe’s admission exposed the land grab’s “failure”.
“It has been a phenomenal and absolute failure on every level,” said Tendai Biti, secretary for economic affairs of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. “It has failed both in terms of production of crops and in terms of the occupation of the land.”
And what is more, they seem to have supplied the Telegraph with a reason for the failure of the new farmers to farm successfully:
The new farmers are unable to raise bank loans because their properties are formally owned by the government and they have no individual title deeds. Without loans, they cannot buy seed, fertiliser or farming equipment and the regime has broken a pledge to supply them with tools.
Some farmers have resorted to using horse-drawn ploughs. Many have given up trying to produce anything at all.
So Mr Mugabe has made yet another mistake, this time in mishandling the arrangements for the new farmers with whom he has replaced the previous ones he stole from. But has he admitted it? No. Has he shifted the blame onto the hapless farmers? Yes. I would not want to be in their shoes now.
Par for the course. Mugabe is infallible. Reality is unworthy of him and has let him down.
But more importantly, this is a revolution that is starting to devour its own, to implode. Those “new farmers” are, or were, enthusiastic Mugabe supporters, were they not?. Now they are being blamed for the failure of a Mugabe policy. With luck, this means that this vile regime is now starting seriously to weaken itself, rather than merely to weaken its enemies.
If that is right, it might help to explain this:
Zimbabwe will hold parliamentary elections on March 31 and, for the first time in 10 years, Mr Mugabe is no longer holding out the offer of white-owned land as a vote-winner. Instead, his speeches are dominated by attacks on Tony Blair, who he claims is plotting to recolonise Zimbabwe.
I daresay many of his listeners are thinking: that sounds good. When is the Great White Blair due?
As I have said before, Robert Mugabe is now the leading spreader of the idea that Africa should be reconquered by white people.
We curse and rage at the BBC here, a lot, but you have to admit that this is a great story.
Even Ghana’s director of tourism may have to admit that Accra has its work cut out competing with other tourist destinations in Africa. Yet just outside the capital, is the suburb of Teshi and it is here that tourists are coming to look at a relatively new tradition – the fantasy coffin makers.
So how did this happen?
The story goes that in the first half of last century one Ata Owoo was well-known for making magnificent chairs to transport the village chief on poles or the shoulders of minions.
When Owoo had finished one particularly elaborate creation, an eagle, a neighbouring chief wanted one too, this time in the shape of a cocoa pod. A major crop in Ghana.
However, the chief next door died before the bean was finished and so it became his coffin.
Then in 1951, the grandmother of one of Owoo’s apprentices died.
She had never been in an aeroplane, so he built her one for her funeral.
And a tradition was born.
The only bit of what might be BBC politically correct boringness that I could detect in this report came a few paragraphs before that last quote, where it said:
Many of their clients want to bury loved ones in something that reflects their trade.
Even if that means being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle.
Even? I suppose if you are the BBC, that is the ultimate horror. But, if being buried in an airplane or a car or a cockerel or a cocoa pod is okay, then what on earth is so wrong with being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle? (Not Diet Coke obviously. That would be stupid.)
Something tells me that in these post-Christian times, this might spread to other parts of the world. Our boring British death industry could certaionly do with a shake-up. What kind of giant object would you like to be buried it?
It is good to read some good news coming out of Africa. True, African people are dying, but they are mostly dying of natural causes and are going out in style.
Further to this posting and previous postings involving Zimbabwe, the England cricket tour of Zimbabwe, etc., this story is the kind of reason why I am not that bothered about this apparently very stupid cricket tour that is now going ahead. No tour, and there would be that much less reportage of Zimbabwe and its disgusting ruler. What has happened is that about half the media have been banned from entering Zimbabwe, to write about the cricket! I suppose the fear is that they might wonder what all that shouting and screaming and people bashing is that goes on outside cricket grounds (and everywhere else – except in Safari parks apparently, see the comment on that previous posting) in Zimbabwe these days.
All the same, the ICC, cricket’s global governing body, is making itself look ever more ridiculous:
For most countries, intervention from the government in this manner would be grounds enough for withdrawing from the tour but the ICC gave Zimbabwe special dispensation because of the situation in the country under the regime of president Robert Mugabe.
Well, exactly. A normal government cannot be allowed to behave like this. The Mugabe regime, on the other hand, must obviously be spared the interfering attentions of inquisitive journalists. How else can this disgusting regime grapple unhindered with all of the many, many problems caused by its own disgustingness?
There was debate here about just how bad the situation is in Africa in general, just how corrupt African governments now are, and just how pointless and/or harmful it may now be to send them charitable aid, etc. But I take it that no one will claim that matters have improved very much, in particular, Zimbabwe during the last decade.
Up to 70 per cent of Zimbabwe’s workforce, some 3.4 million people, has fled the country to escape the political oppression and collapsing economy under President Robert Mugabe’s rule, according to research by an independent church study group.
The South African-based Solidarity Peace Trust said that most of them had crossed the borders into neighbouring countries, with an estimated 1.5 million skilled and able-bodied workers arriving in South Africa to seek work to support families left behind in Zimbabwe.
“An estimated 25 to 30 per cent of the entire Zimbabwean population has left the nation,” the Peace Trust reported.
“Out of five million potentially productive adults, 3.4 million are outside Zimbabwe. This is a staggering 60 to 70 per cent of productive adults.”
Zimbabwe’s economy is in its most dire crisis since independence in 1980.
But do not worry. Some skilled workers are about to go to Zimbabwe, in the form of a visiting England cricket team.
Which might explain why someone thinks it worthwhile to place adverts featuring this website, next to the Telegraph piece quoted from above. I cannot think of any other reason to want to visit this dreadful place.
Looking for ZIMBABWE flights? Book your cheap holiday or business trip dates? Check availability for all airplane tickets and flights to ZIMBABWE airports, then compare discount airfare rates to find the cheapest airline tickets and ZIMBABWE air travel from Kelkoo UK.
Book your cheap holiday or business trip dates? That would be a real fun holiday. And business? What on earth business might that be? Nothing very civilised I should imagine. Selling cheap bus journeys out of the damn place, perhaps.
What a horror story. Death to Mugabe. Seriously, the sooner that stubborn old bastard drops dead the better, from whatever causes God (in the insurance sense of that much overused word) chooses, the better. This will probably be the next good thing that happens to this wretched country, and if he is as stubborn about clinging on to life as he is in clinging on to his idiotically destructive policies and damn the consequences, then the people of Zimbabwe could be in for a long wait.
I know that many who read this blog might feel that I ought to be angry about those cricketers, but honestly, I cannot see their visit making much difference one way or another. After all, nobody in a position actually to improve matters in Zimbabwe seems at all inclined actually to do that. In South Africa, for example, the big debate now seems to concern whether or not to be nasty to the millions of refugees from Zimbabwe, not about whether anything can or should be done to improve things in Zimbabwe itself.
Reading several pages of interesting reports and discussion on the BBC’s website about Somalia, I wonder:
Is Sudan a better country to live in than Somalia?
Do refugees travel between the two countries (probably via Ethiopia) and which is the better place to live?
How would Somalia score on a human rights questionnaire? Compared with say North Korea. I think of the official line from the worker’s paradise about homosexual rights: “There is no homosexuality in the Republic of Korea, it is a bourgeois disease.”
How obstructive are Somali warlords of international trade compared with say, the EU’s regulatory of tariff restrictions on agriculture? Is it easier and cheaper for a Kenyan farmer to sell food to Somalia than to Sudan or Spain?
I also note that multiple currencies are operating in Somalia, with US dollars, private currencies and old banknotes being exchanged in markets. Are Somalis really so much more intelligent than Europeans who had to be protected from currency choice?
The BBC reporter makes the mistake of comparing Somalia today with Holland Park in London today (except that some types of crime are probably more frequent in Holland Park). He is appalled that guns are for sale and that the entry fees finance qat instead of state schools and state hospitals. I think it is much more interesting to compare Somalia today with neighbouring countries today. On the face of it anarchy seems a lot like Robert A Heinlein’s depiction in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Ken Macleod’s The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal. Despite my quibbles with the BBC on this issue, full marks for going to Somalia eyes wide open, if not quite minds wide open.
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